


midas touch

by Elisye



Series: outside of the golden land [1]
Category: Clockwork (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, mage!Christian, mentions of other characters here and there wwwwwwwww
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-24 19:32:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4932514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisye/pseuds/Elisye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one wants to die over something that just can’t be parted with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	midas touch

**Author's Note:**

> CROSSSSSS-POSSSSST from my tumblr because hey why not

.

Christian patted the cold glass of the window, watching lights rain down on a rare cloudless night.

Young and innocent, aged only three, he sleepily wished upon the shooting stars before turning away, continuing down the dim hall, returning to his bedroom after a midnight excursion - and the next morning, of course, he forgot about what he wished for.

Probably didn’t matter anyway.

.

Aged five, now stuck inside an even colder room with a thick book opened on the table in front of him, watching his private tutor from the corner of his eyes - timing it in his mind, the finely dressed man soon glanced at a clock, saying his ever-familiar notes and farewells before departing.

Sighing, carefully closing the book, Christian slumped into the plush chair, nowhere near interested in reading the contents of the book again for the next hour, as reminded. He preferred to do more exciting things - things that satisfied his immense curiosity.

So, raising a hand, the child simply focused on the thought of a bright, distant full moon - and watched the flickers of gold jumping to life along his fingertips.

.

Aged nine, nearing ten. He had been told about his enrollment into a private establishment that his cousin was attending too - of course, their ages weren’t the same, so he wouldn’t quite be able to see the blond anyway, but the thought was still the only comforting thing about this.

Christian liked being in the manor more. He preferred to be in his comfort zone, by himself, in his quiet but spacious room, trying to perfectly create a sky brighter than the one always seen here. But with only his dissent as a protest, with no rational reasons or logic to uphold his hopes, there wasn’t much else he could do.

At least it wasn’t a boarding school.

.

Aged thirteen, thinking of love and companionship - his fascination with the sky and the earth and the world seemed to win over most other desires, and so he would spend most of his time in the old library and its dusty archives, pouring through books and ignoring people as an accidental consequence.

Most of the books, he noticed belatedly, were about chemistry and biology, with the rest being about history and mythology. Christian silently looked over the weathering pages of the book in his hand, seeing a painted illustration of the war between the two goddesses, Eve and Lilith, while the old and half-familiar story laid chronicled on the page next to it.

“…magic is evil, huh?” he muttered, before shaking his head, soon putting the book away. Even if he thought of that as a ridiculous notion to have, he saw their viewpoint. They wouldn’t be able to see his, though. They didn’t have the means to.

And so, he could only think of love and companionship. Only think.

.

Watching the trees for birds was a strange hobby, but who cared? Christian watched the baby sparrows expectantly, seeing their mother slowly pushing them out one by one - each flew wonderfully, some awkwardly zip-zagging through the air in the beginning, but making it down to the earth safely regardless.

But the last one, no, sadly, it couldn’t fly like the others - he watched the last bird immediately hit the ground without so much as a bounce, as if it couldn’t open its wings at all, and without notice, he was right by it, leaning down, a hand stretched outwards, to see if its wings had broken themselves from the height.

—and then he stopped himself, blinking, looking up. There was no one here, he knew that. It was a miraculously quiet and empty place, which was why he loved to come here whenever he could - but that didn’t mean there was never anyone around. One could never know.

Looking down at the pitiful bird, seemingly wailing through weak chirps and noises, wings fluttering in a very awkward way, the boy soon stood up, brushing dirt off his knees, and hesitantly walked off. 

He couldn’t do anything for anyone. Not in the way he wanted to.

.

Aged somewhere between ten and nineteen, an unspecified memory of transient youth - he had been alone at that moment, wrapped up in thick blankets as he sat on his bed, watching a suspicious little insect crawl along the floor. Of course, it was simple enough to just squash it with a nearby book or a lamp, or something, but this wasn't just any insect.

It was a  _spider_.

Oh Goddesses, please do save him.

The only reason he knew there was a spider there was because of the lightning outside - the bright flashes caught the critter’s shadow, creeping across plain marble. The storm was what was keeping him up so late into the night too, in the first place, but right now that was literally the furthest thing on his mind.

Christian just wanted the spider to go away. To be crushed into gunk, to drown and become eerily lifeless, to be vaporized into nothing, to burn away into little smoking black pieces, just to disappear—really! Anything would do! So long as it simply wasn’t there any more!

Keeping his eyes on the spider, the boy shuffled backwards, against the walls, when the eight-legged monstrosity began to move again, closer to his bed - without stopping. He had been praying for it to just leave him alone at this point, as the best case scenario, so the worst scenario was obviously the opposite. The goddesses were clearly not listening to his prayers, though. So as a knee-jerk response, he just shouted into the air, screeched a gibberish of syllables as he hugged himself into a ball, the blankets hiding him away as a loud noise abruptly cracked the world.

And then, all was silent, colorful lights turning back into the night.

The next day, an officer would remark that he had been too shocked to remember anything - Christian wanted to believe him on that, but judging from how a wall and the windows of his bedroom, which was on the second floor, had been utterly smashed into, clearly not from the storm but by something else…

He certainly knew better.

 .

Aged fifteen, ambitious and desperate to prove a strange mission - bored of stiff greetings, idly recalling the lovely garden in his cousin’s estate, he climbed a tree and accidentally fell off it instead. Everyone lectured him to near death for it—he shuddered to remember even lightly.

So now, here he was, lying in bed with a broken arm and slightly bruised limbs.  His personal physician and doctor had noted how lucky he was to have just one arm fractured, and for it to be his left one too. Could have been worse - death was the ultimatum. Christian was curious to know if that really would be the worst, considering certain factors, but shut up on that train of thought before it could go any further. His curiosity was lethal in times like these.

But nonetheless, sitting in bed, without anything else to do was, well, boring. Sure, he was a patient person, but there were limits to even that. He didn’t want to just keep doing nothing, and he didn’t want to stay confined to a bed for the next couple of days too. If only—

The boy looked at his fractured arm. If only…

A part of him shouted inside his head, loudly—from an old memory, a grandiose narrator of a theatre house, gravely speaking,  _look at the meaning of good and bad! The true and the desired!_ —while another part of him remembered, however very vaguely, a night filled with shooting stars, and an oddly prophetic longing to see a sky as blue as a dream. 

It was obvious which one he would rather listen to better. It was obvious what he wanted - it was obvious that no matter how hard he hoped, changing the view points of society wasn’t something even magic was capable of.

.

Aged eighteen, young but not young enough, not quite—the break up was a polite, simple affair. No loose threads or meanings to catch. Christian offered to walk Maria back to her lavish family manor at the end of the aristocratic district, but was kindly refused, so he could only wave goodbye as they parted on now platonic terms.

Perhaps that was best—no, it was for  _the_  best. Certainly. For as gentle and nice as the brunette was, like nearly all others, her view on magic was strictly white and black, and solely on the wickedness of the black. And what was love, but acceptance?

Or was such an ideal still a selfish one, in hindsight? Possibly.

.

At the age of twenty, Christian met with his cousin at a gathering event. It was a somber affair, feeling nothing like a celebration, and seemed to emphasis on the gloomy, but eerily familiar air that Alexander suddenly had, along with a gaping distance that was never there before. Or had they always been there, just ignored, forgotten?

“A researcher?” The man repeated the words almost thoughtfully, the two lightly discussing about life and its more untold chapters. “That… sounds unlike you.”

Christian chuckled. “Is it that surprising?”

“Yes,” came the oddly flat response. “I assumed you would go into medicine. You would never leave others alone when they were hurt.”

“…ah.”

The blond raised an eyebrow, but didn’t ask any questions, simply observing the shadowed contours on the other’s face. It was clearly a touchy subject, for some strange reason - Christian did love to take care of others, he wouldn’t deny it, but he knew where that desire partly came from.

“…well, as a researcher, I’ll be studying a lot of things - I might find the key to a new medicine, so it’s not so bad!” A small laugh, made louder than it probably should be. No one was commenting, though, which was good enough regardless.

.

Until that very moment, he admittedly did forget about Esther. 

But now that it came at his doorstep, in the form of the blonde in a dark green coat lined with black fur, powdered snow dusting her lightly, as tonight’s snowfall came to a rarely peaceful descent - he was suddenly reminded of her and their times together. Old memories, some friendly, some not.

But none of those things mattered much. With her proposal to leave -  _come, to Mercia; begin anew_  - everything wouldn’t matter. The past wouldn’t matter, at least not as much. His thoughts would become old ones, and be left behind here, in the cold, shaded ice. It was a pleasant idea to entertain, with the naivety of not knowing about how the past could haunt people.

Eagerly, he said yes, and began to pack his bags.

.

Between the years of past and present, this fragment of the uncertain future glimmering, there was one memory of putting to bed a little child who didn’t want to be alone. So Christian remained by him, ruffling his hair until the boy was fast asleep. It became a memory worth keeping for many reasons.

At that time, he remembered thinking about Cog and his future and his well-being, the report of the incident he read, and the definite portrayal of magic being the culprit in his family’s deaths. He remembered wandering back into his recollections, how he healed injured birds and his own injuries without any one’s notice, a trembling balance between convenience and realism. 

But most clearly, he remembered looking out from the only window in that room, seeing a dark blue eternity littered by the cosmos, and remembered wanting to recreate that since forever.

He smiled, wishing to remain on the good side of morality, despite knowing how meaning and worth swayed - and told himself, the air, to the sleeping child, that magic wasn’t needed, not in a world brimming with potential, like this one. 

Christian did not need magic.  _He did not need magic._

.

At the age of thirty, the scientist found himself being dragged around Arcadia by an increasingly familiar ringleader, and while he didn’t appreciate being detoured on his way home with his groceries still in hand, he certainly didn’t mind being charitable if it ever happened.

As Gaz charmingly went on about something that slowly eluded him, Christian made the fortunate and unfortunate mistake of turning his eyes up to the night sky, finding a starless world filled with only clouds and a new moon. One of the many skies that he could recreate on the earth, as the magician he wasn’t supposed to be.

But as it was a sky both familiar and not so, he was reminded of the constellations he would try to perfect in his solitary bedroom, remembering how he would attempt to mimic the suns and the moons in storybooks under his bed. He was reminded of the reason he tried to bring the sky to the ground, down to the earth, where he lived and where he was supposed to remain living, even if he couldn’t stop himself from longing for other things.

Secrets and stories and deep, endless nostalgia—a painful desire to find a place where he could be honest without being afraid - for a hidden instance, everything caught up to him, revealing the knowing ghost that still clung to him, laughing quietly about how these things could never be outrun.

But still. If Christian didn’t know how to lie to himself, let alone others, then certainly, he wouldn’t have lived this long.

.


End file.
